Thank you for the replies everyone. I appreciate all of the input I received. If anything, I’ve learned to be careful in the wording of my questions as someone will always find a way to twist your own words into something it was never meant to be. I just want to apologize for my thread turning into the disaster it has. I am sorry for the “drama” it’s caused. I originally intended to ignore this as the responses I were getting were not answering the question I asked but rather addressing an issue another member made this post into which I found upsetting. However, it seems to have gotten carried away and in-between the chaos there actually are some really great responses that answer MY question that I don’t want to ignore. So, I’d like to say “thanks” for all of those answers, I hope that my not hitting the actual “thanks button” doesn’t make me seem any less appreciative. I mean being thankful comes from within anyway. Just because a person actually hits the thanks button really doesn’t mean they are thankful, it just means they know how to hit a button.


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I’ve thought about the responses on here quite a bit and as much as I wanted to “bite my tongue” I feel the need to say a few things.

Hamster, you attempt to convince me that girls don’t wish for or want something different than what they have (such as a girl with green eyes wishing for blue eyes or a girl who is short wanting to be taller) by using yourself as an example.

“You are incorrect believing that every girl has wants in regards to her looks, even if she does not pursue those wants in practice. I have never wanted my complexion to be any different from what it is, my nose to have any shape or size different from what I have, or any other changes to my face.”

However, you say that you would like to be skinnier now.

“I would like to be a bit skinnier, now that I have gained weight over the last few years”

Explain to me why you wanting to be skinnier is different than a girl wanting longer hair?

Let’s get hypothetical here: I have blue eyes, I could love having blue eyes but still want to have brown eyes. I am not going to ever have brown eyes nor buy brown contacts to make my blue eyes look brown. They will always be blue and I am perfectly fine with that. However, I could still wish that I had brown eyes like Carrie Underwood has. It’s just a harmless desire and that does not make me out of touch with reality. In fact it shows I am in touch with reality as I accept I have blue eyes and acknowledge that changing them is unrealistic. (None of this is true, fyi.) I see this as being no different than a person driving a minivan (a mother with 4 kids perhaps) wishing they could drive a convertible. Realistically, the car just wouldn’t work for the family as the main form of transportation. However, she can still have that desire for it and just not act on it by going out and trading in her minivan for one.

Your reasoning for your desire to be skinny being okay and mine not being okay:

“my want to be skinnier is objective and I stay in touch with reality - the BMI figure is too high. The BMI figure is reality.”

That is understandable. You are overweight; you should lose weight. However, just because my BMI is not too high doesn’t make my desire to lose weight wrong if I am going about it in a healthy way with healthy intentions and understand that I do not need to lose much weight. What about a woman that goes tanning? She may have pale skin and wish to be a bit tanner. Technically there is nothing wrong with her skin tone other than her wishing it was tanner. Does going tanning make her out of touch with reality? Is it really your place to decide that her wanting to be tan is not objectively in need of happening? If she wants to be tanner, pays to go tanning, and is careful to not go overboard then why does it matter?

“No. If you make the assessment that you want to be skinny while you are objectively not in need of being skinnier, you are still wrong.”

Like I said, sometimes women want to lose weight despite being at what is considered a healthy weight for their height. Sometimes we have events to go to such as a wedding where toning up or losing the 5lbs of love handles will make the dress look so much better. It’s not unhealthy, it’s not unrealistic. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look your best. According to you, however, saying so makes me “unable to form an objective assessment.” I strongly disagree.

Your next statement of concern,

“Plus, by posting the picture and soliciting male opinion on the ugliness, you probably believed the their opinion on your looks is somewhat more important than yours.”

“The point remains that your profile, at the time of OP, had your picture (and that of your really cute dog). That, as a fact, speaks more to your intentions than your words do. My posting a link to your profile page, which, within the site, is public, is of no consequence. If you did not want males to look at the picture, you should not have had it up AT THE TIME of posting.”

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. First, considering the fact that my post never mentioned me or my looks your conclusion that I believe male opinions of my looks are more important than my own opinion on my looks is clearly misplaced. I am not sure how you can infer that based on my words. You’ve turned this entire thread into something it’s not.

My original post had nothing to do with “soliciting male opinion on [my] ugliness”, my question was asking what matters more to men (key word being men!)…looks or personality. Yes, I had a profile picture of myself up at the time I posted this question. The picture was up long before I posted this question, however. I didn’t post the picture in conjunction with positing this question in the hopes that the men would throw compliments my way. You took it upon yourself to post the link to my profile picture here in the thread. While that isn’t wrong of you because as you pointed out: it’s a psych central link that anyone on the website is capable of viewing; it was unnecessary as it had nothing to do with my question. Your posting that link only helped feed your belief that the question was posted in attempt to gain some sort of solicitation from the male members. I had a reason for making it clear that I was looking for male opinions because you’ve clearly demonstrated that women think incredibly different than men do. I asked for male opinions and you jumped right in and based off your incredibly detailed posts regarding your sex life (I don’t get how you can even consider jumping down my throat for this post when you post about your masturbation issues regularly) I’m fairly certain you are not a man.
When I tried to explain to you my reason for posting my thread (why do I need to even defend myself to you? I don’t) you completely took it in another direction.

“If you want to be extra precise, though, you need to rephrase the question - you need to ask how guys react to women who are not objectively ugly but perceive themselves as ugly.”

No. That is not what I needed to ask. I asked what I needed to ask exactly the way that I wanted to ask it. I wanted to know what matters more to guys, looks or personality. Would a man date a woman who is not a “ten” on the looks scale but is a “ten” on the personality scale or does physical attraction really matter more? My question was asked the way I wanted to ask it. The way you claim I need to ask the question actually completely changes the question being asked. How you can’t see that is not clear to me.

Then, in attempt to answer your version of my question you say:

“If I were to imagine myself in the position of a hypothetical guy dealing with such a woman, I would leave immediately, because the neediness that would come from this sort of arrangement would not be something that I would look forward to suffering through.”

And yet you were so concerned with the kindness of BigHands? I’m sorry what number husband are you on? Three? Four?

"Adam's compliment remains unacknowledged by you, so you clearly have a really interesting and unusual view of tact, privacy, how to manifest one's intentions properly, and other such matters that are not in any way related to looks."

Adam’s compliment was acknowledged via PM as the point of my thread was not about MY looks and I was trying to keep the focus off of them despite your every attempt to keep the focus on me. Like I said earlier, does hitting the “thanks” button really make a person thankful? It’s the whole don’t judge a book by its cover concept.

Yes, I realize that everything I am writing is probably coming across a little to blunt and rude. I am sorry but when the statements you’ve made have been so far off and… mean; how else am I supposed to reply? I tried being kind to you and yet you make such blatant statements inferring that my posts are a waste of time. I didn’t make you respond, it was your choice. You clearly wanted to respond as you kept on doing so even after making it evident that you didn’t like anything I had to say.

“You do not need to respond to me - since I already wasted my time trying to show to you that you have nothing to worry about (no, girls who do not worry about their looks do not waste their time on such highly theoretical pursuits as "I started this thread with the genuine intention of seeking a general consensus from the males on what matters more looks vs personality."”

“even in the very unlikely scenario that someone would genuinely seek a general consensus on what in her mind appears to be a binary issue between personality and looks, she would use the poll functionality for voting - someone with your 5-year tenure on the board must be aware of how polls are posted and that people seekinggeneral consensus, as a rule, post polls) - I do not intend to waste any more time on you.”

Yes, I have been a member for 5 years. I joined when I was 14 and dealing with issues too big for me to even understand at the time. I used this website for support regularly at that time but then did not use it again for years until just recently. My point is that despite being a member for so long I have no idea what you’re talking about with posting polls. Don’t assume everyone should just know something because YOU know it. Regardless, I would have still posted my question the exact way that I did. So, I am terribly sorry to have wasted so much of your precious time here when you could have been using it to masturbate in your partner’s arms some more or something equally as important.

Judge me as a rude, inconsiderate, or even out of touch with reality if you want to because I just don’t care tonight. By doing so what kind of person does that make you anyway? I guess I should expect an occasional response or two like yours given the name of the website after all but in the words of someone really cool, “if jumping to conclusions was an Olympic event she would be world-class and hijacking your thread was ill-mannered and presumptuous.” All I can say is you are far from classy but I have no doubt you will have an intelligent, wise, and likely controversial response for me in no time. I know you won’t listen to anything I said or take any of it to heart, but I said it for myself more than I did for you. I shouldn’t have to feel bad for asking a question just because it was turned into something else.

To everyone else, I am incredibly sorry for causing such a dramatic scene. I appreciate all of the responses I received and am still reflecting on your answers. I will get back to you.